Monday, May 20, 2013

KIRUNA, Sweden — The Arctic Council
agreed on Wednesday to expand to include six new nations, including
China, as observer states, as a changing climate opens the Arctic to
increasing economic and political competition.

The inclusion of observer states to the council came after a spirited
debate at its biennial meeting and reflected the growing prominence of
the issues facing the region. The council is made up of the eight Arctic
nations: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and
the United States.

With the Arctic ice melting, the region’s abundant supplies of oil, gas
and minerals have become newly accessible, as have shortened shipping
routes and open water for commercial fishing, setting off a global
competition for influence and economic opportunities far beyond the
nations that border the Arctic.

The measure of global warming

AT NOON on May 4th the carbon-dioxide concentration in the atmosphere
around the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii hit 400 parts per million
(ppm). The average for the day was 399.73 and researchers at the
observatory expect this figure, too, to exceed 400 in the next few days.
The last time such values prevailed on Earth was in the Pliocene epoch,
4m years ago, when jungles covered northern Canada.

There have already been a few readings above 400ppm elsewhere—those
taken over the Arctic Ocean in May 2012, for example—but they were
exceptional. Mauna Loa is the benchmark for CO2 measurement
(and has been since 1958, see chart) because Hawaii is so far from large
concentrations of humanity. The Arctic, by contrast, gets a lot of
polluted air from Europe and North America.

The concentration of CO2 peaks in May, falls until October
as plant growth in the northern hemisphere’s summer absorbs the gas,
and then goes up again during winter and spring. This year the average
reading for the whole month will probably also reach 400ppm, according
to Pieter Tans, who is in charge of monitoring at Mauna Loa, and the
seasonally adjusted annual figure will reach 400ppm in the spring of
2014 or 2015.

Mauna Loa’s readings are one of the world’s longest-running
measurement series. The first, made in March 1958, was 315ppm. That
means they have risen by a quarter in 55 years. In the early 1960s they
were going up by 0.7ppm a year. The rate of increase is now 2.1ppm—three
times as fast—reflecting the relentless rise in greenhouse-gas
emissions.

Monday, May 13, 2013

EPA methane report further divides fracking camps

Pittsburgh — The Environmental Protection Agency has
dramatically lowered its estimate of how much of a potent heat-trapping
gas leaks during natural gas production, in a shift with major
implications for a debate that has divided environmentalists: Does the
recent boom in fracking help or hurt the fight against climate change?

Oil
and gas drilling companies had pushed for the change, but there have
been differing scientific estimates of the amount of methane that leaks
from wells, pipelines and other facilities during production and
delivery. Methane is the main component of natural gas.

The new
EPA data is "kind of an earthquake" in the debate over drilling, said
Michael Shellenberger, the president of the Breakthrough Institute, an
environmental group based in Oakland, Calif. "This is great news for
anybody concerned about the climate and strong proof that existing
technologies can be deployed to reduce methane leaks."

Tom Steyer: The Wrath of a Green Billionaire

Billionaires get frustrated by Washington ineptitude just
like everybody else. The difference is that they can afford to do
something about it. Tom Steyer, who founded the San Francisco-based
hedge fund Farallon Capital Management and retired last year with an
estimated $1.4 billion fortune, is one such fed-up billionaire. Steyer’s
particular grievance is the lack of government action to combat global
warming. “If you look at the 2012 campaign, climate change was like
incest—something you couldn’t talk about in polite company,” he says.
“With the current Congress, the chance of any significant energy or
climate legislation that would move the ball forward is somewhere around
nil—possibly lower.”

So Steyer, 55, a major Democratic
contributor, quit Farallon to devote his time and much of his money to
changing this reality. In doing so, he’s joined an emerging class of
billionaires—including this magazine’s owner, Michael Bloomberg and Facebook (FB)
co-founder Mark Zuckerberg—who have forsaken the traditional approach
of working through the political parties and instead jumped directly
into the fray, putting their reputations and fortunes behind a cause.

About Me

Luc is and adventurer, author, and member of the Explorers Club. Graduated from Centrale Paris, he is president of Sagax, a US-based investment and management advisory firm.
He has pursued a personal goal of traveling extensively across the globe, frequently with family; photographing and reporting from remote places to raise awareness for global causes. Luc is also Vice-President of Green Cross France et Territoires, the environmental NGO founded by Mikhail Gorbachev.